Personal Growth

What are the vehicles for personal growth?

I think for some, who do not perhaps have or take sufficient opportunity to mingle with people outside their immediate peer group (be it social, age, or interest), a site like this one is a broadening experience. Without leaving their homes, they meet people of different races, nationalities, social status, financial ability, and religious belief. They learn that their friends might appear to all agree, but perhaps even in their peer groups there could be people who secretly or discretely are like those met here.

As a teenager I was confident I knew more than I actually did. I could be cocky, but usually not outrageously so. Still, I was impatient with older people who didn't understand my brilliance or my need to be who I thought I was then.

As a young adult, after college, I was more tolerant, but only slightly, of those older folks who seemed so smug in their world view. I was ready to build a better world than the one they'd screwed up.

Now, I still retain much of my idealism and my passion for seeing positive change, but I also recognize there is far more complexity to our world than I understood "then." Sometimes we have to compromise to attain the best ends. Sometimes we have to suffer adversity to appreciate the strength required to meet challenges. Sometimes we have to admit someone else has a better idea or knows something we don't know.

Sadly, I see many people insulated from the "vehicles" or "catalysts" for personal growth by walls and filters they or someone else has constructed around them. They often take pride in doggedly holding on to the views instilled in them or arrived at during some earlier point in their lives. They fear the alterations to themselves that might be required if they open themselves to new thinking or alternate views. This stunts their personal development, and society as a whole suffers.

I came to LPSG curious about and fascinated by the lives of men with larger than normal penises. Here I found that there's only so much that can be said or learned about THAT, but there's so much more that can be learned about others, and ourselves, regardless of endowment.

What other vehicles are available or can be structured so that we grow and live fully and consciously?

I think helping other people is a way in which we can achieve lots of personal growth. And forcing them to organise their kitchen cupboards into a strictly regimented order :)

Introspection?

[To Princess] Damn! Come to my kitchen! It needs your organizing touch!

[To Scared] Introspection? Yes, by all means, but where in our "modern society" is introspection actively encouraged?

You'd hate me, I'm terribly bossy and I'd make you throw all your crap out :)

It's not encouraged but it should be. It's one reason why some people's personal growth is stunted by a kind of mind-dwarfism.

People need to learn their own individual value, strength and merits. Not to just follow a trend and be integrated into a crowd. Rising above peer pressure is key in being able to understand yourself. If you see yourself as one of many rather than the individual that you are, then you are losing out.

Most of the crap is stuff waiting to be recycled...

So, back to Scared's comment, does introspection come when we have moved beyond boredom and are forced to confront ourselves? Is that a curse that comes of living in a time when we avoid boredom so fiercely? Can we train others to be introspective? Or set up circumstances that allow/guide/force them to look inward?

For me, introspection comes mostly during depression. So, I 'm sure that it could come during bouts of boredom for others. I think people could be "trained" to be introspective, but the methods wouldn't be right. It's kind of something you just need to figure out on your own. Being told to do something or how to do something (for some people) doesn't work very well.

I like this thread. :x Gonna keep my nose in it.

I'm not a great believer in introspection, you can learn more about yourself from one minute's worth of action than you can in a year of thinking about how you feel. Get out and about, mix with people, learn from them and learn about yourself from the mirror of their reactions.

Perhaps moderation... or a healthy mix of mixing and introspection. Surely for each of us what is necessary is not exactly the same.

Raising children has been my biggest source of personal growth (and I'm not talking about the nine-months-of-belly).

Secondly, it's been the trials and errors of being an entrepreneur.

Thirdly, it was breaking away from a religious group that stultified original thinking. That was kind of like waking up. Duh! All the illogical things that just have to be "accepted".

Yes balance is always good but I think too much sitting around thinking about yourself is just maudlin and self indulgent.

Of course, but too much of the time we simply do not take the time to think about ourselves and our places in the world at all. Parents run around making sure that tutoring is followed by soccer/football practice is followed by piano lessons is followed by... Others are multi-tasking every waking hour. Where do we ever see SOME little bit of time taken for introspection being valued?

AND other than introspection and the mixing with others to see how we are mirrored in their perception of us, how do we grow?

I think that ties in with what I hear a lot of people say - 'I'm bored'. It seems people have to be doing something now, that they have no inner resources to amuse themselves if they're not doing something, while I don't believe in spending lots of time in introspection it is good to have a good think once in a while and to have the facility that if you've got nothing to do you can simply have another think.

Living your life consciously.

Loving people and yourself. Treat people right.

We are not the center of the universe. Life is.

Counterbalancing your spirituality. When bad things happen, make some equally or better things happen in your life.

Learn something new.

Live and love healthy.

If love isn't in the equation, look for everything to be disastrous.

Yeah, you can fall in love with the wrong person. We are human. Don't beat yourself over it.

Don't EVER judge or compare. There are always someone better than you. Be humble. Everybody cannot be who you are. Be yourself.